As mostly a long-term investor, I couldn't see myself investing in AAPL back in April '12. At the time, i felt I missed the boat at the beginning of 2012. I'm glad I didn't chase this stock.

I understand the immense success of Apple the last 5 years. I understand the innovation this company has brought to mobile phones and tablets. It's a great company for consumers, but not a great company (long term) for investors. Why? They busted out in the early 80's w/ the MAC, a game-changer that was quickly copied by Microsoft, and eventually commoditized....Apple busted out again recently w/ the iPhone/iPod/iPad and the ecosystem that's ringing the cash register w/ IMMENSE profits. But both product and ecosystem are being copied as we speak. Talk all you want about 'quality product/customer experience', high-end fit/finish, the 'must have/'IN crowd item' appeal. At the end of the day, it's consumer experience can, and is being copied, just like the MAC back in the early 80's. Apple is a great innovator, but it's missing a "dominate trait" for the long haul. It can't seem to dominate like the Wintel juggernaut (SP?) has the past 25 years.

Am I over-simplifying this? Absolutely. Am I interested in what Apple will do w/ his HUGE pile of cash? Yes. Am I going to invest in Apple and wait to see what happens when they put that pile of cash to use? NO..... Just too much risk for me.....My tech investment dollars are going to Intel at these great prices, because nobody (as of now) can copy their product. it's a 'best of breed' company w/ a real moat that Apple doesn't have. Yes, they are late to the mobile party, but I think we're in the 2nd inning, so to speak. I'll get growing dividend payments (think yield on cost) while I wait... I'm not an Apple hater. I love my iPhone 4s. For me, I just can't invest in this company. I wish those that do, all the best....

Apple is basically a consumer products company in a market segment with the most fickle of tastes. One miss-step or even if they just get a little lazy or behind and Samsung or some other competitor takes 50% of their market share in 90 days. I've already seen Apple rise and fall once in my lifetime. I've seen Nokia and Motorola rise and fall. Apple is not a solid investment iMHO. There are sharks constantly circling it.

In this case it was more like "the brains behind the operation died".
Samsung is the new Dell and Sony wrapped in one. This is purely Dell and Sony's fault. The last 5 years both of their products have gotten crappier and shittier. I don't think I've been to a best buy since Windows 7 came out, that didn't have a Sony Lap top that didn't have several keys missing.
Sony used to be the Moniker of quality electronics. And Dells used to be solid dependable Laptops. Their offerings for the last several years have been crap. Made from plastic so cheap and flimsy the case flexes and gives when you grab the laptop and place it on your lap.
Samsung makes a solid dependable product, and their touch pad is more innovative than anything on Sony or Dell.
And their smart phones seem to get better mileage than HTC or LG.

The title of this thread should be how soon Apple is $1000/share.
The only limit to Apple's profits is the growth of the working population of the world. Presently, I think it's about 20 million new working people per year.
It's pretty amazing. Their success is they do not make any crappy junk, Jobs would not tolerate it.
Their website is great, their stores are great, their customer service is great, their products are great, their brand is great, even their various software is great. Their ads are great also come to think of it.

The only limit to Apple's profits is the growth of the working population of the world. Presently, I think it's about 20 million new working people per year.

It's pretty amazing. Their success is they do not make any crappy junk, Jobs would not tolerate it.

Their website is great, their stores are great, their customer service is great, their products are great, their brand is great, even their various software is great. Their ads are great also come to think of it.

Another thing to consider, the knowledge of Apple's future growth has been baked into the price. What new information will cause the stock price to go up? A smaller iPhone? A bigger iPhone? A smaller AND bigger iPhone?

The ability to visualize a product as being important and valuable for customers is the "vision" i am talking about.Even customers didn't agree that they will like Ipad until they started using them..now thats called vision.

Yes, but then how many more customers "like" the product only because other people like it? A trend is a feedback loop.

Apple (AAPL) fell for the third day in a row as the biggest drag on both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 after reports on Monday of cuts to orders for iPhone parts. Apple was down nearly 3 percent at $487.50 after hitting a session low of $485.60, its lowest level since February.

It is always cyclical. The Apple stock goes up after the new product is announced. And it takes a dive after. I am always on the short sale after the new product announcement. And buy back later. I have never lost on this position yet. My gain this time is more than 20% in 4 months. I sold it at $700. I bought it back at $500. If it goes down even more, that's unrealized gain. I don't care.

Just wait til Apple announces a new exciting product like low cost iPhone. I am so sure that market is going to go wild bucking bull. After they blow their wad, you know what happens. Or are you going to buy now and take a chance that Apple is going to announce a new exciting product. Nah, I wait til they do. And I see how the market reacts and short sale.

Apple needs to make a real impressionable product this time. Unfortunately, no amount of investment can develop a talent like Steve Jobs and his visions. The talent is indeed scarce.

Earnings are are coming up right quick. Anyone making bets? My gut tells me to lay down some Feb 10 calls at $530. The iPhone 5 and iPad Mini sold like heroin-infused hotcakes over the holiday season. For some reason, I expect record earnings as a result. Now, last quarter they announced record earnings and the stock tanked because investors wanted "RECORD record earnings" but I think that the market overreacted. When Apple reports solid growth this quarter, there may be a mad rush back in, and I expect AAPL to close over $600 in the next month.

I am not a financial adviser and this is not investing advice. Rather, it is wild speculation that is probably about as useful as telling you to go put all of your money down on red. It's the internet, where bullshit is FUN!

Now who is going to buy all the run down 1200sqft shacks in Cupertino? We just lots a boat load of greater fools in one quarterly report. Doh

yeah, $13 billion in profits in 12 weeks... Apple is really slacking.. only earning $6.5 MILLION an hour is gonna put them out of business real soon.

How much did Amazon earn in profits last quarter.. how bout Netflix?

Apple is definitely doing well, but companies can change quickly. That's what "prediction" is all about. If everybody based their investment decisions entirely on past results, nobody would make money investing.

I don't see Apple "changing quickly". Worst case scenario its growth stalls.. which is happening to a degree. If growth stalls.. they will still bring in $40 Billion a year in profit.. so by 2020.. their cash hoard will be around $430 Billion....

Meaning the opening price of Apple stock tomorrow morning will roughly EQUAL it's cash hoard. It currently has about 30% of it's stock price in cold hard cash.

People are fearing Apple will become Microsoft... but Apple has larger margins and more marketshare to gain. They'll probably cede some marketshare in IPAD space... but they were very quick to come out with the IPAD mini to combat Samsung iterations.

Samsung can't be making much profit on their machines... They are falling into the Amazon trap of Revenue over profits.

You could have said the same thing in 2004 in the opposite direction. Things change very quickly in this space. Where was Samsung prior to 2010? What happend to Nokia and RIM?

This isn't to say that I'd make any predictions of things going badly for Apple any time soon. They're a very well run company, even without Jobs. But they've failed to produce anything new and exciting since Jobs passed away, and the only entirely new product that they've unveiled since that event was met with scorn and derision.

They might be able to keep milking the iphone and ipad for years to come, or sentiment could turn against them overnight. Lots of companies (see: RIM and Nokia) thought that they were unassailable with loyal customers until they weren't.

The real test for Apple is to prove that they can produce new, great products without Steve Jobs. So far, they have failed to do that.

Worst case scenario its growth stalls..

No, the worst-case scenario is a massive, sudden drop in sales. Ask Nokia.

If growth stalls.. they will still bring in $40 Billion a year in profit.. so by 2020.. their cash hoard will be around $430 Billion....

They'd never sit on that much cash. With growth slowing, they'll start paying out dividends to keep shareholders pacified, and doing stock buybacks. There's no point in keeping that much cash, because the only companies that they could buy with it that make any sense would trigger anti trust issues (and Apple wouldn't want them anyway).

Apple is essentially Microsoft...

A company floundering to stay relevant, hemmoraging what talent it has left, and watching its core business gradually decay? That doesn't sound like Apple at all, actually.

but with larger magins and more marketshare to gain.

Apple has a larger share of the operating system market than Microsoft (Microsoft is now down to 18% of all personal computing devices, compared to Google's 51% and Apple's 25%). So not really.

They'll probably cede some marketshare in IPAD space... but they were very quick to come out with the IPAD mini to combat Samsung iterations.

I dunno about 'very quick' since they introduced it two years after Samsung came out with the galaxy tab. The ipad mini was clearly a response to the Nexus 7, not the galaxy tab.

Samsung made 25b last year and growing fast. Mobile is 70%. For all intent and purpose, Samsung is the most formidable tech company in the world.

I agree, Samsung will crush them all. They have been making cheap but good enough products and are to Apple what linux servers were to Sun servers - the ultimate commoditizers.

Samsung is doing well right now, but I'd be cautious there too. They are great commoditizers, but that just means that they'll drive the margins on these devices into the ground, like what happened with PCs.

Margins on devices are already starting to decay. Look at the race to the bottom happening already: The Nexus 4 is the best android smartphone there is, and you can buy it for $300 without a subsidy. The Nexus 7 is the best android tablet there is, and you can buy it for $200 without a subsidy.

To me, it seems that the remaining profits are going to go to whoever owns the service and content ecosystems. Hardware will return to its natural low margin state. This doesn't just mean the platform owners like Apple and Google, but also service providers like Netflix and Amazon.

but that just means that they'll drive the margins on these devices into the ground, like what happened with PCs.

"Wintel" drove margins on PC's into the ground. There were plenty of profits to be made in the PC, Intel and Microsoft took most of it, leaving 5-10% to IBM, HP and Dell.

More reasons why Apple and Samsung will never go back to those days.

I dunno. The ipad mini was clearly designed as a price competitor. Samsung is already lowering the prices on their tablets in the wake of the N7 and various competitors from ASUS, Archos, and LG.

Whatever tablet margins are left will disappear over the next year. Apple may decide to copy their approach to PCs here, and remain a high margin, low market share player.

High end handsets are supported in large part by subsidies in the US (just compare sales numbers by country; high end phones don't sell well in countries without subsidies). All 4 major US carriers have indicated that they want to end the subsidy model.

Apple had a hard time selling iphones until they started getting subsidies for them. Nobody wanted to pay $700 for a phone. Once they could get it for $200-300 from AT&T, they started selling like hot cakes.

The nature of hardware is commoditization. Samsung and Apple can fight all they want, but there will always be somebody willing to go lower. Consumers are overwhelmingly willing to buy a lower quality product for a significant price cut.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if, 5-10 years from now, Apple makes a larger profit from the app store / itunes than they do on hardware.

Samsung won't allow anybody else to get the hardware profits on their devices, but that doesn't mean that they won't be willing to accept a 5% margin over all. After all, that would still be better than every other industry that they are in with the exception of financial services.

The interesting thing this time around is that there isn't anybody making a direct profit on software. Google's money comes from ads, digital content, and services. Microsoft is trying to give windows phone away for free (or even pay people to use it / sue them into using it) but doesn't seem to have any backup plan.

If Apple is a bad investment at its current price, then Samsung is an even worse investment.

Samsung has lower margins, and no premium pricing power.

Samsung doesnt control its OS... Google does.

Samsung has yet to innovate, just copied Apple.... Or made slight variations like increasing or decreasing Screen sizes.

None of these things really tells us whether Samsung is a good investment or not. Samsung is a highly diversified conglomerate. Apple makes a relatively tiny number of products. They're very different companies. Samsung was a huge (bigger than Apple at the time), profitable company long before they produced a single smartphone.

Note that, by revenue, samsung electronics (just one part of the company) is as big of a company as Apple.

What is going to drive growth in Samsung that wont also drive growth in Apple?

If subsidies to smartphones went away it would hurt Samsung just as much or more than Apple... Atleast Apple has some brand cache.

Nope. In countries that don't have subsidies, Samsung outsells Apple by more than they do in the US. They make cheaper hardware, and only a small segment of the population is willing to pay more money for brand (nevermind quality...people make poor decisions)